News came from Italy on Friday that two fingers and a tooth removed from astronomer Galileo Galilei’s corpse have been recovered.

Back in 1737, 95 years after Galileo’s death, admirers moving the body took three fingers, a vertabra and the tooth.

Galileo’s remains were moved from a Florentine basilica to Santa Croce Basilica in Florence, which is also where Michelangelo’s remains are entombed.

One finger was recovered shortly after and is on display at the Museum of History and Science in Florence. The vertebra is now at the University of Padua, where Galileo taught.

The remaining items were kept by a marquis, who passed them down to his relatives.

In the early 1900s, the container with the three items was misplaced.

It recently was bought at an auction and the buyer was curious as to the contents of the glass container.  The buyer contacted officials in Florence who were able to verify the documentation that the fingers and tooth were Galileo’s.

As you may recall, Galileo was condemned by the Vatican for saying the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time had the Earth as the center of the universe.

Pope John Paul II restored Galileo’s reputation in the early 1990s.

It is amazing that people back then treated the famous as they do now.

A month ago, some of Elvis Presley’s hair was auctioned off for more than $15,000.

I cannot even fathom how much the two fingers and tooth of Galileo would bring.

They are priceless as far as what he discovered.